Carter’s is getting ready for a summer of soccer with its latest collection and campaign. The apparel brand teamed with Umbro for a collection of rompers, jerseys, skorts and shorts that lets kids rep teams including Argentina, Brazil, England and the U.S. as the world prepares for the World Cup.
“Umbro has always been rooted in the culture and pride of the world’s game,” said Andie Lipton, senior vice president of marketing, creative and communications at Umbro parent Iconix International, in a press release. “Partnering with Carter’s lets us bring that legacy to the next generation of fans in a way that feels authentic and fun for families.”
The effort kicked off with the “World’s Smallest Presser,” a press conference that featured U.S. soccer legend Briana Scurry and was led by local Boys & Girls Club youth. The event was moderated by Carter’s Correspondents, a group that will report on major soccer moments throughout the tournament as the effort expands from Atlanta, where Carter’s is headquartered, to Los Angeles, New York City and Dallas.
Central to the effort is a 30-second spot made with R&R Partners that captures a universal truth of youth sports: every parent around the world eventually yells, “Wrong goal!” The campaign is running across online video and a variety of connected TV platforms, and represents the first creative under Global CMO Sarah Crockett, who joined the brand in June 2025 after stints at Designer Shoe Warehouse and Dickies.
Carter’s, Inc., which includes its namesake brand along with OshKosh B'gosh, Skip Hop, Little Planet and Otter Avenue, saw net sales grow 8% in Q4 fiscal 2025 and 2% for the year. Executives on an earnings call explained that the company plans for a “pretty significant incremental investment” in marketing spend this year after under-indexing compared to competitors.
Marketing Dive recently spoke with Crockett about the campaign, how the brand is evolving its marketing spend and more.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
MARKETING DIVE: Tell me about Carter’s new campaign and what it says about this moment for the brand.
SARAH CROCKETT: It's a really exciting opportunity. There's a connected TV spot that highlights the emotion and the connection between Umbro and Carter's, but there's so much more as well. We've got retail experiences. We're hosting the Carter's Cup here in our own backyard in Atlanta. We've got Carter's Correspondents in four host cities for the big summer soccer experience that's taking a global stage.
This is really an opportunity for us to look at culture. This is something that I've been really excited about since joining Carter's. Seeing what the culture is going to be talking about and paying attention to, is there a space for Carter's in this moment? The answer is absolutely yes. It's soccer. It's a global game. It starts with kids, and I think it's easy to forget about the kids in these moments when all the adults and athletes are the heroes, but it really starts with kids, and we're happy to be able to shine a bright light on that.
The ad has a real international, multicultural flavor, with all the parents shouting “wrong goal” in their own language.
There are very few things that connect cultures universally, and soccer — or fútbol — is absolutely one of them. You don't need to speak the same language when you show up on the street or on the field with a ball and a homemade goal. [It spans] multiple cultures, multiple generations. Now in 2026 there's this global stage for the sport being hosted right here in our own backyards.
How does this campaign speak to your priorities at Carter’s?
This campaign is a very good example of how our broader marketing evolution is coming to life. It's not just a campaign. It's a connected platform that brings together storytelling at more of an emotional level and brings together cultural relevance of the moment that is happening this summer with real consumer engagement across multiple touch points.
Bringing the campaign to life with this expanded media strategy represents this campaign, but it's also representing our evolution as a marketing function for Carter's expanded media ecosystem, including social influencers, connected TV, real-life events, clever and creative PR that connects with the right media outlets and the right consumers. This really represents cultural relevance meeting a distinct point of view and creating this memorable storytelling for Carter's.
Where was Carter’s marketing when you joined, and how do you see it evolving?
What excited me the most about the opportunity to join Carter's was really its potential, and being able to join an organization that is the category leader in a highly emotional category. [Parenting] represents one of the most special chapters of someone's life, if you're lucky enough to have it.
There was a lot happening around communicating at what I would refer to as a very transactional level: a lot of price marketing, a lot of promotion marketing, things of that nature. What we're evolving to is really connecting on a point of view, and that's an opportunity for Carter's to show up as a member of the communities that we serve, being a brand of action and representing the highs and lows of parenting, all with this incredible backdrop that is this beautiful heritage brand.
Legacy or heritage can easily become a bad word, but that's only if it stays in the past. Our job is to really leverage our heritage to be the brand that they not only know and trust because of our 160 years, but also the brand that they reach for today. You can easily describe that as a strategy of pairing heritage with progression.
How are parents’ consumer behaviors evolving as new consumers enter this stage of life?
There's so much happening with the Gen Z and millennial group; they're the ones who are having children at a higher clip than some of the other generations right now. These parents are incredibly values driven, obviously very digital in their nature. That's been the case for years now. They expect brands to reflect those values and just show up in the way, in the places that they're spending their time. They want authenticity and representation, which ultimately establishes relevance.
We're focused on being consumer-immersed, listening closely, and not only listening, but actively applying those insights, designing with families in mind and showing up in ways that really reflect the diversity of this generation that are having families.
It all start with the word “families,” and family is defined so differently for this generation than generations past. It's not necessarily always blood [relations]. We're seeing communities, the whole notion of “it takes a village,” really showing up strongly in this generation, and it's our job to really embrace that and show up as the category leaders and commit to modeling that.
Carter’s executives spoke about increasing marketing spend on a recent earnings call. How do you anticipate pulling those levers of spend?
It's fair to say that we have definitely been much more focused on that transactional side, which is that lower-funnel component of the marketing investment. Our commitment, and the actions that you're starting to see results reported on, is really about building the right ecosystem for marketing. I always like to refer to it as an ecosystem. You can replace that with a funnel. I actually do still believe in the funnel — I recognize people are moving very fast through it in some channels, and that's different, but it still serves a purpose.
The ecosystem was missing some of those upper-funnel brand introduction channels, or an opportunity to remind our consumers about what Carter’s stands for beyond price. We are absolutely proud to be a value brand and a brand that is built on trust, and we want to make sure that our consumers can always trust that they can get that right formula of value, which is price, style and quality coming together.
But we have so much more to message and communicate and to connect with them on and that takes an opportunity to be in more storytelling-friendly channels. It's hard to tell those stories in a Google feed. We love our Google feed. We're going to keep that in play, but we're trying to add [channels] so it's about an “and” not just an “or.”
